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But in what way is the content of Intellectual-Principle
participant in good? Is it because each member of it is an Idea
or because of their beauty or how?
Anything coming from The Good carries the image and type
belonging to that original or deriving from it, as anything going
back to warmth or sweetness carries the memory of those
originals: Life entered into Intellectual-Principle from The
Supreme, for its origin is in the Activity streaming Thence;
Intellectual-Principle springs from the Supreme, and with it the
beauty of the Ideas; at once all these, Life,
Intellectual-Principle, Idea, must inevitably have goodness.
But what is the common element in them? Derivation from the First
is not enough to procure identical quality; there must be some
element held in common by the things derived: one source may
produce many differing things as also one outgoing thing may take
difference in various recipients: what enters into the First Act
is different from what that Act transmits and there is
difference, again, in the effect here. Nonetheless every item may
be good in a degree of its own. To what, then, is the highest
degree due?
But first we must ask whether Life is a good, bare Life, or only
the Life streaming Thence, very different from the Life known
here? Once more, then, what constitutes the goodness of Life?
The Life of The Good, or rather not its Life but that given forth
from it.
But if in that higher Life there must be something from That,
something which is the Authentic Life, we must admit that since
nothing worthless can come Thence Life in itself is good; so too
we must admit, in the case of Authentic Intellectual-Principle,
that its Life because good derives from that First; thus it
becomes clear that every Idea is good and informed by the Good.
The Ideas must have something of good, whether as a common
property or as a distinct attribution or as held in some distinct
measure.
Thus it is established that the particular Idea contains in its
essence something of good and thereby becomes a good thing; for
Life we found to be good not in the bare being but in its
derivation from the Authentic, the Supreme whence it sprung: and
the same is true of Intellectual-Principle: we are forced
therefore admit a certain identity.
When, with all their differences, things may be affirmed to have
a measure of identity, the matter of the identity may very well
be established in their very essence and yet be mentally
abstracted; thus life in man or horse yields the notion of
animal; from water or fire we may get that of warmth; the first
case is a definition of Kind, the other two cite qualities,
primary and secondary respectively. Both or one part of
Intellect, then, would be called by the one term good.
Is The Good, then, inherent in the Ideas essentially? Each of
them is good but the goodness is not that of the Unity-Good. How,
then, is it present?
By the mode of parts.
But The Good is without parts?
No doubt The Good is a unity; but here it has become
particularized. The First Activity is good and anything
determined in accord with it is good as also is any resultant.
There is the good that is good by origin in The First, the good
that is in an ordered system derived from that earlier, and the
good that is in the actualization [in the thing participant].
Derived, then, not identical- like the speech and walk and other
characteristics of one man, each playing its due part.
Here, it is obvious, goodness depends upon order, rhythm, but
what equivalent exists There?
We might answer that in the case of the sense-order, too, the
good is imposed since the ordering is of things different from
the Orderer but that There the very things are good.
But why are they thus good in themselves? We cannot be content
with the conviction of their goodness on the ground of their
origin in that realm: we do not deny that things deriving Thence
are good, but our subject demands that we discover the mode by
which they come to possess that goodness.
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